The following discussion of the prior art is intended to facilitate an understanding of the invention and to enable the advantages of it to be more fully understood. It should be appreciated, however, that any reference to prior art throughout the specification should not be construed as an express or implied admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
It is now common for gaming establishments to offer jackpot prizes on casino table games. During the course of play of a base casino table game, players are provided the option of entering an auxiliary game by placing a side wager. A portion of the side wager accumulates a prize pool which is won when a participating player receives a predetermined game outcome in the base game. This type of side wager and jackpot are known as the “event based progressive” jackpot because the jackpot accumulates as more players elect to make a side wager and because it is won depending on particular events occurring in the base game.
Examples of such games are Caribbean Stud Poker as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,930 and Texas Hold 'Em Poker. The method of play of these games involves the player opting to place an optional additional side wager in anticipation of being dealt a particular hand, for instance a Royal Flush, in the base game. The side wagers taken from all participating players on the table and across a number of tables contribute to a jackpot prize pool. If a player is dealt the winning hand, the player wins 100% of the accumulated prize pool.
Depending on the number of gaming tables contributing to the prize pool and the game configuration, these prize pools can quickly grow to more than 100,000 times the base side wager. The attraction of these games is the chance to win a significant prize. Different configurations can be setup to award different percentages of the prize pool however the games are common in that a pre determined hand is awarded a percentage of the prize pool.
One down side of these games is that the likelihood of winning the main prize is very low and consequently interest in the game wanes.
Gaming suppliers and gaming establishments are always looking at new base games on which to offer a standard progressive to renew interest however an event based progressive has an inherent trade off—a large prize is popular initially but in order for the prize pool to accumulate to a high value its frequency of a win occurrence must be very low and over time players will lose interest.
Another method of providing jackpots and bonus prizes on table games is the random progressive type jackpot auxiliary game which commonly involves an event generated by a Random Number Generator (“RNG”) which is associated in some way with the underlying casino game. As an example a display can show a randomly generated lucky card during the sequence of play of an underlying base game. If the random card is matched by the same card in a player's hand, then that player is awarded a prize. Such a method is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,743,800.
One problem with this game is that it can be difficult to expand the side game across different types of table games because the chance of winning the jackpot can depend upon fixed odds in the base game.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or substantially ameliorate one or more of the deficiencies of the prior art, or at least to provide a useful alternative.